I've been in the IT industry since the time of the dinosaurs (ICL anyone?). I've written books about the Internet and networking, consulted for all sorts of companies, and been a contributor and columnist for Network World for 18 years (check out my Backspin and Gearhead columns). I created and co-founded Netratings (now wholly owned by Nielsen) and have CTO'ed for a couple of startups. I live in Ventura, CA. I do not surf.

If you’ve missed the recent brouhaha over the E-Cat (which stands for Energy Catalyzer), you’re missing out on a three ring circus over a technology that will either change everything or change nothing because what is promised is, in theory, power too cheap to be worth metering.

The E-Cat is a simple device albeit with functioning that defies all known explanations.

In summary, the E-Cat is a cold fusion (CF) device (the inventor, Andrea Rossi, prefers to term the technology “Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” which appears to be the same thing as CF but a less contentious phrasing). I’ll refer you to my Network World column for a more long-winded explanation of the background and theories about the device.

The problem with Rossi’s system is that it is too good to be true. It is claimed that the E-Cat only requires some initial heating to start after which the reaction is self-sustaining. The reaction uses a secret catalyst to transform nickel into copper with heat being produced which can be used to make steam, drive a Stirling engine, or be used for whatever you please.

If this device works as claimed, the world will change and not just a little but hugely and at every level of how we’re organized, how we make stuff, how we travel, and how wealth is distributed. And those changes won’t just impact the US or the Western hemisphere; they will transform the entire world because incredibly cheap energy is the ultimate game changer.

So, here’s what I’m wondering: If the E-Cat does work, how will ultra-cheap energy transform your world? Imagine the following:

Where today you use petroleum products for motive energy (for example, to propel cars, trucks, and planes) you will be using steam engines or Stirling engines. In theory you’ll be able to drive across the country for cents. What will that do to the trucking industry? The shipping industry? Aviation?

With the demand for gasoline falling overnight and petroleum becoming needed primarily as feedstock for plastics, the US would immediately become self-sufficient in crude oil. What will happen in the Middle East without the huge flow of cash from the Western hemisphere? How will world politics be changed?

An E-Cat system could power your house or office making the existing grid obsolete. What would it mean to make your personal and corporate electricity and gas bills nearly zero?

The cost of manufacturing would fall very quickly with energy removed from the equation. If you are in manufacturing of any kind, this will affect you enormously. How fast could and how would you rework your corporate strategy to become competitive in a market where prices suddenly plummeted (note that the suddenly reduced cash flows would play havoc with the finance structures of many corporations).

So, the E-Cat will be demonstrated on the 28th of this month and I, for one, will be watching with great interest and enormous hope because if Rossi’s E-Cat system works, it will be goodbye recession and hello, brave new world.

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You wrote:”So, the E-Cat will be demonstrated on the 28th of this month and I, for one, will be watching with great interest and enormous hope because if Rossi’s E-Cat system works, it will be goodbye recession and hello, brave new world.”

Even if this device does what it claims to do, and I agree with you that it is highly unlikely, it would have nothing to do with end the current recession. Recessions, depressions, “panics”, and the like are not caused by expensive energy and not ended by inexpensive energy.

The reason the e-cat will not end the current recession is that it’ll take a lot to long to spool up. Once people realize that the thing is for real, it will begin to have a negative, not positive, effect on our economy. Who would buy a gas powered vehicle when waiting a few years will give them a nuclear powered one? Why would hydroelectric projects continue, or oil pipelines?

It’ll take time for car companies to convert to steam engines. A lot of industries, and their employees, will feel the negative effects of the e-cat before the positive effects are felt.

When the dust settles, it’ll be great for most. It’ll be really bad for some (exxon, Saudi Arabia, etc.) But the dust won’t settle in less than a decade.

I think it will be more complex than what both of you propose. If we new the catalyzer for example I could easily make an ecat at home. I can’t build a gasoline engine nor a nuclear power plant at home so easily.

I think the stock market would rally while anybody working for oil companies would likely see changes.

Car manufacturers that invested in electrical cars would make a rapid switch to rechargeable cars at first, then possibly ecat run cars so that would spurt growth.

It’s fairly evident that the fossil fuel business is inseparable from the central banking perpetual-war model of the United States. The NSA has been shutting down free energy labs since the fifties as that is exactly what cold fusion is; a threat to the GovCorp complex that is the United States way of running the world with a gun to its head. It’s important to factor this into the context rather than make feeble statements like its too good to be true. The Universe has an unavoidable leitmotif. It is energetic and free.

Capitalism crumbles under free energy and I’m happy to be on record with that statement. www.charlesfrith.com

The primary function of civilization is food flow. Secondary functions such as knowledge acquisition, storage and retrieval are driven by the primary function; and in any case has already been disintermediated by information technologies. The real question is: “How will disintermediated energy affect food flow?” Bottom line is that once energy id disintermediated, food flow is disintermediated. Cities are obsolete hence civilization is obsolete.

Exactly, energy is one of the primary functions of civilisation, the creation and containment of fire certainly pushed us into civilization kicking and screaming!

In a world powered by LENR, we could ensure that the poorest driest African countries receive cheaply made desalinated water, pumped cheaply in huge pipelines to whoever needs that pure water to grow crops and irrigate land. The continent of Africa could easily become the world’s bread basket, all because of cheap energy.